Settling
by Blue Da-Ba-Dee
Summary: Formerly a one-shot. Slices of Inquisition life as Cole grows into the aftereffects of taking Varric's guidance. Spoilers for Cole's companion quest.
1. Inquisitor, Varric, and Solas: Settling

"Cole told me he was hungry for the first time today," said the Inquisitor, smirking uncertainly, nodding into a mug.

A "ha" from the Iron Bull on the edge of the counter, a "heh" from Varric on an adjacent barstool. "Just like that?" said Blackwall, at a little table in the corner, across from Solas; the two held a fan of cards each in their hands.

"What was that?"

"He told you up straight?" Half a smile between beard and moustache. "If so, he's learning, all right."

"Actually, no—he described it, first, and then asked me if what he was feeling was hunger."

"He was alarmed, no doubt," said Solas.

He slapped a card down onto the little table like a spittly punctuation mark; Blackwall squinted, scowled. Muttered "Why do I even bother" and drew the card in, cue for each man to shuffle his hand.

The Inquisitor's eyes darted down into the mug of beer. Hung there for a moment. "A bit. I don't blame him."

"Don't know what it's like being a spirit—not having to do any of that. But I sure as shit am proud of him for feeling his way through it."

"Proud," said Solas.

Varric cocked a brow and looked to Blackwall with a question not verbally articulated. Blackwall's look back, however, clearly enough said "what", and Varric nodded his head – nothing affirmative or anything other than a movement – after Solas. "Yeah," he said. "Proud. And so's the Inquisitor."

"Are you, Inquisitor?" Solas's eyes were narrowed.

A beat. "If I wasn't, I wouldn't have brought it up, Solas."

"You might have," said Bull. Another "heh". He downed his mug, thumped his chest. "Maybe not in the way you did, though."

"Meaning?"

"Solas," said Blackwall, the fan of cards in his hand closed.

Bull said, "It could've had a little more—try, 'oh, no-o-o, demon kid's starving, or sick, or whatever'. Mother-henning. That, Boss? Did sound like a proud superior."

"There's nothing to be proud of," said Solas, splaying his cards again. "Except for his own ability to articulate and come to terms with changes in his sensation. In his system. In his nature of _being_. All that I am hearing is that one more thing can kill him: malnourishment. I asked if he was distressed because that is what killed the real Cole. I imagine he remembers the feeling through another."

"Lots of stuff'll kill you, Solas. Or worse." Varric shrugged and crossed his legs up on the barstool, wiped his nose. "Like, ahh – I dunno. Being bound, I guess?" A tilted head and a cocked eyebrow. "Going unseen your whole eternal life? Being forgotten, not letting anything that means anything stick to you?"

He drained his mug. The bard changed her song, and began to strum. Sera was never an agreeable girl… Blackwall smirked and began tapping his boot.

Solas stared into his cards like a man drinking bitterly alone, brow knit and eyes catching the torch orange.

"A spirit can live that way," he said, the consonants clipped and tidy like stems on a pruned shrub. "A spirit, Varric, doesn't need to 'do'. It simply needs to be. That is what a spirit is." The corner of his lip twitched. "Another rare spirit gone. This one, lost to us forever."

Varric's brow grew heavy. "We haven't '_lost him_', Chuckles."

"My good friend Wisdom can reform. It is an idea. Not a person. An entire piece of an idea has been taken from the Fade and locked to the ground."

"Yeah, locked, maybe. Not _dead_." Varric's voice flattened, pressed; he looked over to the corner table to aim it. "We've still got Cole's compassion, Solas. It's just—" He stopped, shrugged again.

A tilt of the head from the Inquisitor. "It's just what?"

"You got nothing to worry about, Inquisitor. You know what I think."

"I'm curious; that's all."

"Curious to further consider the implications of your decision," said Solas, playing another card. Blackwall's nose crumpled and his eyes dropped, shifted around to solidify his "out" status in the conversation. "You'd like to hear a bit more of each of our interpretations of Cole's present status."

"Perhaps," said the Inquisitor, glancing to Blackwall. Mirrored cocked-brow looks.

"Like you said, Chuckles, and you're the expert here; a spirit doesn't _do_, it _is_. He isn't just compassion that gives itself away and wipes itself out anymore. He can still—I dunno, instill it. He's not afraid to let people react to him anymore."

"He doesn't just personify, you mean," said the Inquisitor.

Bull said, "Spirit-ify."

Varric laughed, and said "Personify, now!"

"You mean he can really represent it, if he wants to. It's his foundation, but he's more than that."

"I don't know, kind of."

"You're the writer here, Varric."

"I'm a very, very drunk writer right now," Varric said, smirking with a pull to let teeth shine. "We all get the idea, don't we? What about you, Chuckles; does Quizzy here make sense?"

Solas growled out a sigh, brow locked tense and eyes fixed on the table.

Another card flapped down. He held his hand on it.

"_Wel_l," said Blackwall, pleased.

Solas's brow then lifted, under a certain constraint. A few strums of a lute and a copper-chiming opening of space. Foam splashed, and Bull hollered a "_hey!_" to the Chargers, heading to where they sat on the tables by the wall with the windows; purple light cast for evening.

Varric watched them. The smirk was fixed.

And then he turned to face forward on the stool. Placed his elbows on the corner and laced his fingers, eyes on the Inquisitor. "What was the kid's first meal, anyway? Now I'm sure you thought to make it special." The smirk brightened without a change in expression; all in the tone, sliding along in beer foam.

The Inquisitor laughed. "Not special enough. Or perhaps too special. I brought him a few things, started him on a piece of herb bread, and he took one nibble and made this, ah—'ngh' sound. He said it was 'much'."

"What were his exact words, Inquisitor? Did he bite into a leaf? Was the bread imported Orlesian?" A chuckle. "I've been a person all my life and I'm not ready for Orlesian… stuff. That mostly being some of the cheese, though; bread's fine. Not to mention the snails… Keep him away from the cheese. Might blow the poor kid's mind."

"He's not a child, Varric," said Solas.

Blackwall hrrrmphed, pinching his temples, muttered something under his breath that took a step up to "Solas."

"Really?" Varric turned around again. "'Cause you and I sound like a couple of bickering parents right now. And you're the overprotective one. I'm the one who says, hey! Kid's going stir-crazy, let's take him out, expand his horizons."

"_Varric_," said Blackwall.

"Oh, don't worry," said Solas. Flapped his cards flat, face-up on the table; Blackwall slapped his hand down and leaned up on the table to examine them. "We're done—as in, you and I, with this round." He cocked his head slow; a "sinking-in" and a small smile. "I win."

"I—_balls_, not again."

"That's another twelve you owe me, but I believe I'll pass in favor of seeing you dance the Remigold. Here, and now. Please, stand near the singer."

"Learn to tune us out for next time," said Varric, lazily. "Next it'll be about who pays which bills."

"That's enough, Varric." Solas stood without looking, following Blackwall. Smile on hold.

The Inquisitor and Varric both turned, leaning onto their knees. The barkeep slowed down behind them, looking between the Chargers singing through the last of the daylight, over to the bearded warrior shaking his head by the elf talking to the minstrel. He poured out one beer at a trickle, and then another. "On us, your Worship."

The Inquisitor nodded, and said "thanks".

"You're welcome," said Varric.

"I—" The Inquisitor's eyes flicked open and down to him.

"Yeah, yeah, I know you weren't talking to me, Boss, but." Another shrug. "I bet Solas says you're welcome, too, and that we both say thanks, and we say it to each other. In fact, this is probably our roundabout way of getting it said. We all care in here, don't we?"

"I do, Varric. And I know you all do."

Varric's smirk relaxed into a smile. "I know you know," he said.

They both rested on their elbows. The song changed, several sets of metal boots began to stamp out different paces. The Chargers turned and snorted; Solas laughed.

For the night, words as words went back to their rooms.

* * *

><p><em>Crossposted to AO3.<em>


	2. Cole: Successes

It smelled like many things now, in the hall. Neither happiness nor sadness has a smell that a nose made for a human can pick up on, and so Cole didn't sense that; stress and strain did have smells, however, and, allegedly, so did fear. Cole wondered if Solas would have known it, and then forgot to wonder promptly. It did smell of strain, perhaps, but otherwise, it smelled much the way it sounded, of warmth from candles and fires, wood burning; of dancing, or some of the strain off of it, the sort that people liked as a reminder that they were still living; and of bitter drinks and of several kinds of food. Eating, Blackwall had said. That'd be first. Not only hungering, but keeping food down. Cole could now much better guess how it tasted.

Cole had only felt the need as the real Cole before. (He is _a_ real Cole now. He had felt it living in a copy from which another copy would be made, and from which the feeling would, in the future, be read.) He had thought that he needed to eat, and let it pass and forgot when it did. The first time he has felt it as himself has come and passed. It was frightening in words without a Fade song blocking the needlepoint—beginnings of snakes tying themselves in knots and swallowing each other with nothing else to swallow, and he'd thought that _this was what killed me first. _Squeezing stomach, approaching done, like bleeding except that it happens when everything is where it is meant to be; more like water running.

The Inquisitor had brought him a piece of herbed bread from the kitchens and a cup of water. Drinking was what Blackwall had said would come next. Cole had taken nibbles, remembered what it was to drink, thought of water in a pond, cooling the smoke-filled throat, and then gone. Cold, outside and in, cleaned.

The bit of bitterness in the air was still unfamiliar, on a direct level—it wrinkled his nose, faintly, when a decanter popped uncorked.

The holder wasn't any other than Blackwall, in fact, just under a meter away, armor as dark and shiny as the decanter. Cole turned to watch the quiet for ripples, the shine for a shimmer, pressing up off his knees where he crouched on the table.

Blackwall had said that drinking for real would come third, and intention flickered—now the man thought that he may as well see it when it did, trying to make himself all the happier, to see more resolved. Cole wasn't sure how clearly and fully he could hear the notion, but he nodded, sketching it out with charcoal in his head. Nothing had really ended yet—too much was still in progress, or starting. Blackwall needed to be there to hold the roof up, continued sentence in a failure to make it feel more finished. He thought he heard Blackwall begin to speak a moment before he did, but by the time it came to mind to question, the point was null.

"Come on, Cole—'realer', right? Indulge me," the big bearded man said, watching the rim of the bottle and then aside to be sure he was heard. Their eyes met.

_A Grey Warden dies protecting. When the black wall fell I held the roof up with my hands. There will still be weather to weather._

Blackwall's then pulled off to a corner, and the thought wound itself snuffed quiet like a disappearing plume of smoke. Cole's thoughts made a single swat in the air to grab after it, and then let it disappear, poising at the ready like a cat watching a ghost as Blackwall spoke again. "Sera's not joining me, you see; off chasing a skirt, or something. She asked me to piss off. Kindly, for her. Says she doesn't need a wingman. But winning a war seems a sorry occasion for drinking alone, and if she doesn't see me splitting a bottle with you, all the better."

Cole leaned forward. Blackwall lifted and tilted a bottle; a crystal curve warped and sparkled in distortion, then thinned and flowed and splashed like a settled pondering into one glass. It stopped, and then into another. The two glasses were equally-filled.

"One whole glass?" Cole asked.

"I'm not going to hold your nose and force you to drink every drop of yours. But you _are_ eating and drinking now. The Inquisitor told us all so. And, night like tonight—us bringing down he who would usurp the Maker's throne—"

_Black City. Black Walls. A usurper from the origin of purpose, brought down by a stranger followed by a man who wishes to wear the name. Too good, but not good enough. How much higher can we go, how much higher will I steal. Built, and stones fall, but in war, victory. No one thinks I am a wall anymore, but I _will _serve. If I had died tonight, I would have fulfilled only two of the three oaths. Three tributes, tithe toward fulfillment of the borrowed name._

Cole backed out into the layer that meant it was a joke, although the statement was true, if made to sound thinner.

"—give us a little more to celebrate. One more for your coming parade of firsts as a real boy."

Blackwall picked up both glasses and held one out to Cole, who eyed up the sides and curves of the glass, so thin the light barely held inside it and the idea looked like that of touching a bubble. Cole chanced it, and it lit down like a butterfly.

With the lack of illumination around it, the wine looked black. Cole balanced the glass in both hands and peeked inside. The scent congealed in his nose until he sneezed. The wine jumped. A streak of it licked the edge of the glass and tossed a bead into the air, which bounced, Cole blinking at the wrong moment to see where it landed, instead watching the unspilled wine settle.

Blackwall made a noise.

"Was that bad?" Cole asked.

"Not really, just—" His eyes shifted aside again, and back. He swished his glass moodily. "You're not supposed to smell it like that. Hasn't anyone ever… I don't know. Haven't you ever overheard that? In heads or not. You want to smell it, you're supposed to _waft_ it."

"Why?"

"Maker's balls, I couldn't tell you. Ask Dorian for a lesson in the finer points of proper wine-tasting later, Cole. Not yet. Just do me a favor. Raise your glass."

It was a toast. This, Cole understood. He did as told, and Blackwall reached his own glass out. Cole watched them meet with a ring and, under it, another splash, silenced, smothering itself. "To victory," Blackwall said, and drank, barely turning, his eyes on Cole's glass.

Cole pulled it back in, took another look to Blackwall, still looking back, waiting for him to drink.

And then he nodded, and stared at the liquid until his eyes could pull the red in it from the purple, brightening the black, making it look like something that is meant to be drunk. The smell was heady again, and he tried to think through samplings on others' heads, so that he'd likewise be ready to drink it, but any impression he could catch ahold of was damp in the sound of the hall, and he shut it out for clarity. He drank—and bit his teeth down over flashing lukewarm fire, nose wrinkling again and face flickering and flinching from it. Something still wanted to slip loose, and so he let out a sound: "_Nnnngh._"

Blackwall laughed. "Should've expected that, shouldn't I. How was it, boy?"

It cleared out—mind flaring yellow and coolness in his throat where he had swallowed. He swallowed again to check it. "Warm," said Cole. "But cold where it used to be."

"It isn't even that strong, as far as wine goes. Just all right, too, in terms of quality. Not _bad_, though. Probably better to start small. Go on, have another sip. Or don't. It's up to you."

The glass shook unconsciously in Cole's hands. He closed his eyes, nodding again. A golden glow, a shimmer across a fake Veil. He wrinkled his nose once more preemptively and took another small sip—swallows the sound, and stepped across it. The air felt to be a different pressure. The cold evened—voices hummed and harmonized, all smoothing.

Drunkenness is fake dreamwalking, he thought, with impressions un-dampening. The fake Fade is what many people do this for.

"Don't suppose you're thinking about him," said Blackwall. "Getting any visions off a reminder, or anything." Cole's eyes popped open. Blackwall tilted his head slightly, shook it out. "The real Cole. Had he ever had a taste of wine before he…?" A shrug.

Cole was a real Cole, but not _the_ real Cole. The question completed itself. He went quiet and focused.

"…No," he decided. "He never did. He was—" _He was, or he did…? Clarity, Cole, can you clear it. _He pulled his eyes away.

There was a young elven man there at the table, pushing the air in front of him to the side with a wave. "Mind moving over, friend? You're like a roosting hen."

Cole's mind snapped back into his body and found it was a bit too airy for it, suspended from the fake Fade. He nodded, hard, and pressed himself aside and kicked a leg down, and it fell harder and faster than he had predicted. Cole swung, arms out, and the elf hopped aside. The wine nearly spilled but did not. Cole caught himself.

Both shoes on the ground. Mind hanging up, and body hanging from mind. Swinging to a stop, like a windchime when the wind's subsided.

A controlled swing to the side, to the elven man, already pretending to have forgotten and leaning onto the table to pick at food. "Sorry," Cole said.

"'Excuse me' will do," said the elf. He didn't mean it meanly.

"Is that right?" Cole asked Blackwall—a swing and shuffle back the other way. Took more to stop the momentum, the pendulum on the string.

Blackwall's glass was full again, and he was leaning back with it, lower back resting against edge of the table. "Don't see how it matters now."

"That doesn't answer my question."

Blackwall made a blowing sound—it was a laugh, but it was difficult to tell how much real mirth was in it, even listening behind the beard. "I can beat you at your own game now, then."

Cole blinked his eyes wider, to look like he was asking a new question until he could think of which one to commit to words. He didn't know what game he was supposed to be playing—and yet he knows what Blackwall meant.

He lay it down and copied, leaning as well instead of sitting like a roosting hen again, holding the glass in a mirror of Blackwall and then setting it down.

He watched those milling and mingling, murmuring, misgiving whispers wiped away by merriment. Mirth. The voices buzzed on, and he focused at one set or another, experimentally, hearing them tune louder and softer or sharper around edges, between faces and voices, with a vibrating torchlight for the Inquisitor. He wanders up along the false Veil, up the stairs, through the Inquisitor's quarters. Eyes on the balcony are watching for the sun, as never in too long had it seemed so entirely certain that the dawn will come. Cole thought he saw it early, something just-so, and his eyes went full with it—

And then he blinked.

Water poured in a soft, closing circle over the fire like a whisper to soothe. The focus disconnected. Let the Inquisitor have that dawn, for now, or their share of it, bright as the Anchor, sky pulled closed, clean, and sealed with a soft stroke of a hand like the eyes of a corpse that no longer need suffer an old sickness—

The door on the light closed. His head dropped down into his chest. A torch held above his head yet inside it.

He was in the room again, and his thought began to drift in sound and scent again, feeling out the patterns, into a song.

Everyone here was hoping, the hope of having time left after all, of not dying, a happy or relieved hope, or a nervous one, or a guilty or rueful one at being left Blackwall hoped for peace so that he could be vigilant, and the Inquisitor hoped to see the world pull fixed to mirror the Fade. (Was the Fade fixed? Cole wouldn't tell, until he slept. _I won't dream like Solas. I will only see where I am allowed to go._) Cassandra hoped, and Dorian hoped, and the Iron Bull hoped, and Vivienne hoped, and Sera hoped, and Varric hoped, and Leliana and Josephine and Cullen and his soldiers and the refugees and the merchants and messengers and smiths and the elven man at the table and the human man who was crossing his legs and pointing in the Inquisitor's throne who Cassandra was huffing and crossing over to pull off were all hoping. The shades mixed and melted together in the hum to hope itself.

He steeped in the color and in every shade, and he was happy for now, too, beginning to sway, unbindable, free and for the future as the rest of them. On that level of resonance, some of the unease started to shake clearer, less a pull and more a call, and he stood up to meet it.

He thanked Blackwall; Blackwall asked whatever for.

"—For sharing the wine," Cole said.

"You don't have to humor me, Cole. You didn't even like it." Blackwall shrugged, shoulders-only. "Anyway, don't you go spreading that I gave you any, all right? Mind you, if you do, it's my fault. I'm already out of the good graces of too many. I should've thought sooner that I don't need being a bad influence on you to my list of _crimes_."

"You are becoming more like a Grey Warden, now. And you know it. I heard it."

"That's a 'no' on you growing out of rooting around in others' heads." Blackwall's face twitched and pinned beneath the hair. "But I hope you're right, Cole."

He didn't hope; he knew. A point to leave unstated.

Cole rose away from the table and he mingled without even realizing he was mingling, forgot to make them forget or fail to notice; affirmations and agreements were enough to tune strings to harmony in the hall, and he was apart yet there, up and flying and floating with eyes on the morning. Not on him, he only halfway thought, but not off of him; as the lights became that much brighter he was caught in it and belonged, both stoking others' and carrying for himself the kind of torch that mortals have, for everyone's time, for growing heroism and betterment, for the Herald's dawn, for the Inquisition's dawn, for the victory of the chance to try. Mortal _hope_ in a song of thought.

Just as a person does, he slept that night—lay down the still-heavy body to let his mind float, from the fake Fade to the real one, holding hands and agreeing with the others' trust that he would float back from it safely when the sun was bright.


	3. Cole: Preparing

It was dark in the Fade while Cole slept—lonely with a lost lead, on a trail that was long and unbroken. It was fixed, he thought—it was harder to tell now, and there were no other spirits there to read the feelings of.

Cole's mind was still lighter than his body when he woke up on his bedroll in the tavern's attic. There was a moment where he couldn't quite remember anything but celebration and strange sorrow—the glow of last night's victory in one, and the spinning, spiraling, sparkling Fade in the other. He wondered if last night was only a vision for just a split moment, and if the world wasn't real anymore, but it switched with settling; he remembered the Orb's explosion and what didn't change after, the return to the hall of Skyhold, loud vibrancy of joy and fear and future, and the dawn through the eyes of the Inquisitor.

It set him happy in the waking, but clingingly sad, too, and that, he searched what of the Fade he imagined he was still hanging in for. It was then what he saw there that he couldn't quite remember—he remembered that wine stole memories, but couldn't tell if that was to blame, if the fake Fade stole it away or if he would've even made it big enough to steal a dream, or if it was due to the growing distance between the true Fade and himself. The gap between his waking self and his dreaming self was uneven, shining only faintly and with little distinguishing but the sound of a bird on the roof, which he followed as it somehow seemed it wanted, pushing himself up.

His head was smarting and heavier than it normally was. When he opened his eyes, flicking his hair off of them, the light of the world was realer, and it could be, for now. Boundaries were mended, and people moved because they were alive enough to move. His eyes widened and his mouth pulled to a smile around the words "Good morning", to the Iron Bull, to Cabot, to Sutherland, to Sera, all stirring in their sleeps, it dawning on them that they were waking up, heaving back across the Veil like swords through spiderwebs.

And steps came up the stairs like the sun over stones—one over one.

Cole blinked open and thought forward—flash of green. Pushed himself up on a crate to stand and watched the Inquisitor step up to the top floor. Cole searched. The Inquisitor was beaming—a beam that was charged by an afterburn of exhaustion, and lack of sleep. "Good morning," said the Inquisitor, disregarding.

Cole was alive, too, and so was the Inquisitor.

"How did everyone else sleep?" he asked. _Sleep. Sleep, who did sleep? _something continued absently.

"You're the last I've dropped in on during my rounds," said the Inquisitor, settling feet against the wood. "Everyone's awake and well, apart from a few hangovers." Someone had disapproved in the Fade, it occurred to Cole in a drop of a flint. "And, ah." The Inquisitor's eyes blanked a moment. "I couldn't exactly confirm the status of—Solas, but, apart from him."

"I—saw him in the Fade!" Cole said. "Last night."

He blinked wide and then rapidly, sky opening and shutting in his head to light his memory again.

"You—did?"

"Yes." He nodded. Recalled a voice.

"As in, you met him walking the Fade? Or you dreamed him?"

"I-I can't tell."

_It was still dark, but there was a plane on which they stood. Solas walked with his staff and didn't turn, wearing a cloak that shook and rippled up like water hit by rocks. It felt like the waking Fade. It was a waking Fade or a dream-copy of it, a dream of a dream._

_"Solas," Cole said._

_Solas turned._

_His eyes glowed blue._

The Inquisitor's eyes were further open, too. "What did he say?"

Cole's lips pulled and pressed. "He asked me not to follow him. But I didn't. He let me find him. I don't remember my way around the Fade so well anymore, but he _does_."

"That—makes sense."

Then Cole fell back in.

_Solas, in the dream, stopped to smile. "Of course," he said, his voice rolling low and slow like a fog. A small smile pulled onto his face. "What better way to celebrate the continuance of mortal existence than to rope you into shortening yours with them?"_

_Cole didn't understand. Behind the blue, in front of the black, inside Solas's head was something tying itself in knots—a quick tumble, tangle of anger and amusement. He's mad at Blackwall, Cole scratched in for himself, for the wine, but Solas wasn't thinking of Blackwall, rather than who was here._

_He does want me to be here, Cole thought, feeling a flash of cold in a push and pull, the Fade bleeding outlines away and pulling him down into place. Solas would decide._

_"You're—you're alone," he said._

_"As alone as I wish to be," said Solas. "You needn't fear."_

_"I'm not afraid. I want to help."_

_"You needn't fear on my behalf, Cole. There is nothing you can do."_

_"I am doing something now, Solas. You knew I would be here. You knew I was dreaming."_

_"Then you understand." Solas lifted his head, and the curve of his neck showed he'd started to turn away._

_"No," said Cole._

_Solas's smile ghosted down. The "sad" did not. As he shook his head, his shoulders began to turn to parallel Cole's. Cole's mind ached as the pull tightened—Solas drew himself along it, step by step._

_He lifted his hands, and rested them on Cole's upper arms, lightly. Cole didn't feel them. "You do," said Solas. "Focus, Cole."_

"He talked to me. He said that—"

_"You're doing just fine. You don't know, but you understand. Memory is memory. I've a path I'm pulled aside to walk, and you've been pulled to the ground to walk your own."_

_"Your time is more precious than mine, as is the time of those who remain. You still believe the Inquisition will do good work." He took his hands away. "Then help them."_

_"They are unhappy that you left."_

_"I can name a few who I'm certain aren't so sorry that I'm gone."_

_It was a joke, and scraped and sparked in Cole's head. "Please—"_

_"I don't mean to cause you distress, Cole. I recognize that was inappropriate and I apologize."_

_"They're confused. They don't know why you won't stay and they're scared. So are you."_

_"It is no matter, Cole. This is about more than want. More than happiness. And you've helped me as much as I can afford to permit you to. Am I lying?"_

_"I… can't tell."_

_"Then believe me." Solas held eye contact. The smile returned, soft as the blue light. "This has helped. Thank you."_

_Cole didn't say anything._

_"If they want some light shed on the meaning of my leaving, unfortunately I can't allow that to be. But there is much else that you can do for them. Must. I will not leave you here in sadness so long as I can tell you don't intend to let what lingers of your nature die."_

_"I won't," said Cole._

_"And I believe you," said Solas. "We both believe. I know all that I need to know to proceed with what ease of mind I could have taken."_

_"That isn't enough."_

_"Yes, Cole. It is. By lingering any longer, you'll be wasting your worry. You've worthier work to attend to and much more that you'll need to be to carry it out, before you're done. I wish you well."_

_The last word flickered off behind his hood with the light, and with a step, the folds of his cloak reached into the surrounding Fade and pulled him away without a trace or a trail._

_Cole stood, blown in cold and staring, searching, as if his vision had caved out, or as if a hole had been ripped in his memory. His feet still would not move until he remembered that this was sleep. Wake up. You've forgotten already. Search for the way back…_

The copy of the black vanished, and Cole was in the tavern with the Inquisitor again.

The Inquisitor was quiet. "Quite a bit of fatalistic talk."

The words were spoken with a sour note, a guilty one. _Mortality, made by decision._

"I was willing to die all along," said Cole. "If I had to die, I wanted to die."

The note pulled flat, in the Inquisitor's head, dragging but nowhere near so keen. The Inquisitor's eyes were narrowed and thrown aside as if trying to spot for where it ended, then back up.

Another note played. "Would you care to come with me?"

Cole blinked and registered it. Brighter. "Come with you where?"

"Around Skyhold, simple as that. Again, you're the last of everyone I've checked in on this morning."

"Why are you asking me?"

"Because you've reminded me there's something we need to address, Cole. Please, come on."

The Inquisitor didn't turn and beckon—instead, held the question in place with a look.

Cole dropped his head, closed his eyes, and felt something meant for him, bleary and unidentified. "Yes," he said.

The Inquisitor smiled and nodded, and headed down the steps. Cole followed, each step down shaking his mind better set into place. The Inquisitor opened the tavern door and Cole squinted in the fullness of the sun, fluttered them open for piece at a time of the world in-tact.

It was filtered, the sight and sound outside from the sight and sound inside, where the light didn't touch. Cole skimmed his eyes around the courtyard as they crossed to the hall, at a still-smoking campfire and bottles and bedrolls. A few slept, and around them where whispers of unease instead of fear. They had taken the chance to sleep quietly, slipped in, and the Veil sagged over them, little-disturbed and prepared to bundle and cloak the memory. They wouldn't remember what they saw any more than he had remembered his own dream, initially; it lined up into words in his head, too lazy to demand speaking.

His mouth twitched and opened to emit a sigh, and in the sigh there wasn't so much as voice, detached as much as thinking was from saying.

There was a flicker someplace—the Inquisitor noticed—but when he glanced over, the Inquisitor didn't look back. Brushed it aside and forgot it.

"So, to be clear, Cole, you _are_ staying?"

He searched for any doubt, couldn't find it, and found the justification for posing it as a question; the articulation floated past, just overhead.

"Yes," he said. "I don't—know where else I would go.

A question knifed through his head—_haven't I helped here?_—but he knew the answer; pulled it out with a wince and discarded it. He popped his eyes open for the Inquisitor to understand, or not.

"Solas—" the Inquisitor started; a ripple bounced off of _was_, and into…"—he _would've_ been right. Your life is your own. If you ever wanted or needed to leave, I wouldn't keep you."

"You-you aren't keeping me. I'm staying. You haven't given me a cage, or a lock."

A smile now; edge of a sigh. "That may change now. By that I mean you might get a lock, but it wouldn't be up to me whether it gets any use."

"What do you mean?"

"People see you now. And they remember where they see you _often_. I've gotten a few questions about you. Aren't I looking after you, and the like, what you're doing sleeping up there in the tavern."

"Does it bother people to know I'm _there_?"

"I… wouldn't say it 'bothers' them. But if those at Skyhold are going to think of you as my ward, I should do what I can to ensure you're doing well."

"Ward?"

"Yes." The Inquisitor nodded. "It means I'm looking after you."

Cole knew that. It was a smooth, stony word, sigils on the ground and sentries on walls. He was behind both within it; with perception, a ward was placed _on_ him. He couldn't tell if it was right, or if it was real, rendering the rightness a false point for now—all the work to a ward with a word was a noise, and not even ultimately on his behalf, not about him.

"Where will I stay?"

"With Varric, probably. He implied a short while ago he wouldn't mind you relocating to his quarters. We'll have to ask to confirm with him, won't we?"

The Inquisitor shuffled up to the first platform toward the hall, stopping and turning.

The stance implied invitation. His eyes, except they were behind his eyes, focused and unfocused like matched lenses—he knew he'd knew what he was looking for when he detected it, and there. _Come on up and walk in next to me_, thought the Inquisitor.

Cole scrambled up to the level, the Inquisitor's thought rested into approval, and they coasted in.

"I don't know what this is worth, but I'm glad if I won't be losing you anytime soon," said the Inquisitor once they passed under the arch.

"You're not done helping people," said Cole.

Assumption. Blank space of time between saying and knowing—Cole swallowed to fill it in, searched the Inquisitor for the facts, sorry if he was lying and then sorry for thinking it could be a lie.

Once more time, the Inquisitor cleared it away. A little laugh to swat it and Cole giggled, once, small—a rolling swat back without a joke to warrant it. He watched it.

"It'll be a _while_ before the Inquisition is out of people to help."

The words weren't a direct answer, but their tone was affirmative.

His path would be, for now, wherever he was towed on a cable of trust. The strings attached to his heart hummed and twitched and stirred, measuring a course for which the timer had already started to run.


	4. Cole: Character

First, things were different, and then they were entirely different.

Things were sticking.

First, the Inquisitor introduced him as "my friend, Cole", then as "my—ward, Cole", then as "Cole", and everyone understood—something.

A few people saw him and remembered, then more people saw him and remembered, and then many people saw him and all of them remembered, and the ground pushed back up on his feet where he pressed down with his weight, an anchor in place. Being solid.

He realized that it was happening very fast, if it hadn't already finished happening. Everybody's eyes worked in Skyhold, except for one of Cullen's soldiers, who had an eye that didn't work but who used his remaining eye better than most people used their two, and except for one of Fiona's mages, a woman who was only in her forties and who may as _well_ have been able to see.

They saw humanness better than he still felt it. He was moving with a concept of time. Time flowed in him, and he was better coming to watch it flow. When people noticed him, he didn't see it as a single thing, as one stone at the bottom of a river, but as a little boat made of waterproof cloth that he suddenly didn't want to sink, because boats were supposed to float.

He made it move when they saw him again. He was one of the Inquisitor's men. They asked who he was, exactly, and what does he do? He is one of my fighters. He's self-trained, but skilled. How old is he? Who trained him? They made up stories. He was sixteen, and came to Skyhold as the last survivor when his family's carriage was raided by bandits; perhaps the family trained him. He was twenty-one, and he had been living in a cave near Haven until the Inquisition took him in; he used his knives to hunt or fend off would-be attackers and thieves, and he seemed so young because he never had anyone around to help him get older. Nobody knew how old he is, except whoever put him in the dubious box that Cullen's troops carted him into the keep in from a secret apostate city, along with the apostates' (or magisters'; many of them were probably magisters) robes and enchanting doodads. One person thought he was a Tranquil at first, but that person had not met many Tranquils, and even then they knew better once he said hello, from the lift to it.

And the Inquisitor was right except not. He did bother them to know he was there, and "there" wasn't even the tavern anymore. He still went there, but it wasn't just there. "There" was "here"—anywhere "here" could be. He caused them to be upset by looking, and part of it was worry, with minds filling in what poor thing could have seen? In strange times like these, and part of it was fear of a killer for the Inquisitor who had suddenly appeared, a killer who they'd failed to notice.

Now that they'd seen him, it was too late for any of them not to. They could forget a while and recall it all at the same time if he came out of lying low, which he'd tried, as well as explaining himself. They listened but didn't believe when he said that he was fine, if that was what they needed to hear, because it wasn't telling them enough; he told the ones who were afraid that, don't worry, you won't not notice me again. It didn't work. It would make anything that came after harder.

One of them had laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. Cole hadn't been certain whether he liked it, and neither had the one who laughed, himself. He'd said "I wouldn't miss you, ser, I don't think," and he'd been talking about the hat without using one word or gesture that indicated _hat_.

Since he'd stopped sleeping in the tavern, most of them, fretting or fearful, understood that the strange boy with the hat was now lodging with the dwarf with the masculine chest.

_A silk shirt with the top two buttons undone. Ohh, but the chest hair, she says, sighed, smiling. A joke. He walks straight and takes more space as eyes draw him up and down, side to side._

Varric knew about appearances, but Cole did not plan on asking him at night.

Varric wrote at night, and why wouldn't he? Varric was a writer, and the fact was related to making appearances talk and pick their own names. He made shapes out of stone that didn't exist, and they animated in the mind and in the Fade; he was a maker, not a fighter. Common knowledge. He was an Inquisition operative who made. Even on the field, he made, for the sake of fighting. "Artificer".

Varric Tethras was, no less, an author, and an operative of the Inquisition.

He was still more than Cole was, and said more.

And he was making. Making more, and meditating.

Cole sat on the edge of Varric's bed, listening to his quill scratching.

It was a good sound. He didn't need to tap his heels on the headboard. Varric was listening, too.

"I can hear gears turning, kid," said Varric. "Guess you're rubbing off on me. You got something to say?"

When Varric went quiet, everything was quiet.

"—I don't have gears," he said.

"Juuust another expression, Cole." Varric turned halfway in his chair, smiling. Laying out an invitation already. "You haven't moved an inch since I sat down. You focused on something? Worried? Anything you need to say?"

"Not—need…" Cole let his head drop to one side.

"Anything you'd like to, then. I'm taking a little break to let Jolie and Requin here plan their next moves."

"What do people think of you?"

"They think I'm three feet of rugged good looks; I've got a way with words that're worth a few coins on paper, and worth a knock on the head for smartassery out loud."

"But—why do they think you're part of the Inquisition?" Cole nodded, still; that wasn't complete, but it was true. He drew his knees up onto the bed with him and leaned forward, hands up on his legs. There was a rocking sound. "You're a writer—even people who don't know you know that, but no one asks why you have to go out on the field to do that, with people who fight."

"Well, I tote and openly fondle my crossbow often enough." Varric laughs. Not all that happily, like the one who made the joke about the hat. "I'm the only man for Bianca; 'course I'm worth keeping around on an adventure."

Like the joke about the hat, that was a joke about something not mentioned. Cole stared through it to see it pointing in, as it frequently was, making a joke at himself for playing pretend, parodying pain. Puppets to hold the place of people past, that are too "cute", tongue in cheek, made of wood and wire, or of cats' cushions tied into people-like shapes with golden twine.

_"This is no time for jokes, Varric," he says. _

_"You're no fun anymore, Blondie."_

_The realization is stark—for the fun had been to cover the fear. He said it was for justice, but_

_was the justice great…?_

It didn't go any deeper.

Varric saw his staring, and pulled the joke back out, and put it aside. His brow lifted. "You… looking for something, kid?"

"I—" Right, except not. "No."

He had been looking at something, but he hadn't been searching; was that the right answer?

Varric's mouth tightened at one side and he knitted his brow, looking into Cole. "I'm assuming you're curious about something; you're worrying about how everyone sees you, or whatever it is they make of you. Can't you—" Small break, but a full one. Noticeable. "—get that kind of thing straight out of their heads anymore?"

It drew a bit thin, and was held back, the way someone holds a phrase back when they want to ensure room for an apology, already sorry.

Like a hammer landing on cloth, Cole felt an inclination to apologize back touch down.

"I can." He made the "can" softer, meant to assure. "But it's easier to hear what they feel than what they think, because it's louder, and it's right there—and they're not always sure what they think, when I try to catch it."

"So… you've learned to turn it off?"

"Off of what?"

"Never mind." Varric reached back, lightly hit the desk with the side of his fist to

And he thought, priceless.

A thing that you make a person—but a good thing. Cole tentatively smiled.

And Varric beamed. "So." He turned to face forward again, mostly—body, but not head. He tapped his temple. "Were you sneaking a peek at my writing again, kid?"

"I know you don't like it when I do—I'm sorry."

"That's the kind of not-so-straight answer a person gives, kid." The beam was new and propped up against nothing, self-making and self-sustaining. "But, here, why don't we do this again—if I can't keep you outta the creative process, be my advisor. Now… You probably heard this story hatching, too. Madame Requin, here. You and I both know her. What do you think she'd tell Jolie here?"

Cole leaned on in without getting off the bed.

Madame Requin was a joke, too.

He saw a map of her that Varric had made in his head, made one in a flash of Vivienne to fill in blotted spots with (Varric would fix them himself, later, and he'd correct Cole if his pathfinding was wrong), and delivered the next line, in an Orlesian accent that made Varric laugh.

"Spot-on Vivienne," Varric said.

* * *

><p>Varric called attention to Cole the next day. He felt him do it.<p>

Cole was sitting on the steps in front of the hall because no one was going in and out at the time, and a connection hit him like a light arrow made out of a stick. He looked over his shoulder.

A human woman with unease of not knowing tingled in her brain leaned down a bit to mutter a question to him, eyes going back and forth, and Varric started making shapes.

"I could tell you a little about the kid," Varric said, scrubbing his jawline once with his hand to prepare to tell a secret. Then he lifted a finger, pointed lightly. "See that hat of his?"

"That's new."

"Nah, actually. He wears that one when we're out on the field. It's an assassin's hat. Look, the brim casts the face in shadow. Makes sense, better than wearing a mask if you're gonna be getting into some high-intensity action. Bet if you tried some serious dagger-dancing in an Orlesian mask, the fucker'd practically dump buckets of sweat into your eyes. Anyway, I don't know when or how he ended up on his own, but after he did, he went into … can't exactly call it the business. How about the charity? If some poor, downtrodden sap was in dire need of some help that they couldn't scrape together the coin for…"

"I—ah, I _see_…"


End file.
